Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What day is the big warm up for all of you all?
Do you all bring up your males first or both males and females at the same time?
Just curious as to how everyone else does it.....
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John Lassiter

Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Hi John,

I don`t have a "special-day" for the end of brumation.

When the weather changes here and it`s getting warmer outside our kingsnakes getting activ again then it is the time to turn on the lights.

Regularly my L.m.greeri, L.m.thayeri and L.alterna stop feeding september/october, 4 weeks later the brumation begins and i am turning off light and heating.
Most time of the winter-season my snakes hide in the substrat .

Last week the snow melted here in germany and my greeris have started to crawl around, that is my sign to turn on the light again (4 h/d).
Every week i add 1-2 h light, and with 10h light/day i start heating the cages.
5-7 days later we offer the first food.

We (my wife and me) keeping our kingsnakes in groups/breedingcolonies all year long, we only seperate them when feeding.

We can compare the acting of the 3 species and normally the greeris are the first who start mating, the thayeris follow them some weeks later, the first pairing of alternas does not happen before april/may...when the other are ready to lay the eggs.

On the other hand the thayeris and alternas will start feeding very soon, but the greeris will accept the first meal 4 weeks later.

So late january/early feb the cages will be heated and mid/late feb the greeris will start with the pairing...

Thanks for sharing all that with everyone Michael...
That was better than your email, but the email had pictures....haha
Great information from Germany!
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John Lassiter

Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Hi John...
I need some more "training"!

Last sunday I turned on the heating-lamps and ended the brumation-period...

we have to talk about melanistic-thayeri next time.

yours
Michael

I need the training myself Michael.....
Shoot me an email or give me a phone call....

I have about a week and a half before I bring up the males....
Then 2 weeks later the females will be brought up.....

BTW...it may snow here in South Texas (Corpus Christi) tonight and tommorrow morning......Global Warming my ass.......LOL
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...

>>John,
>>
>>No real rhyme or reason to mine either, usually here in FL, I am lucky to get them down by December 15. But for this year they all went down early as the outside temperature dropped early Nov. I had stopped feeding the last week of October when normally its the week of Thanksgiving.
>>
>>Of course my L.p.pyro stop the end of Sept. so their heat is shut off and they stay at room temperature (72-76) for a few more weeks until its time to put everything else down.
>>
>>Now if the outside temps stay at 70 or below in to March/April like last year I won't bring them out til then. Even if I put them down a few weeks early.I have a hard time keeping the room under 60 if the daytime highs get to 75 .
>>Next year will be different as I am building a Cooling Chamber where all I have to do is wheel the cages into. Especially since I will be having some mexicana in the collection this spring.
>>
>>BTW John I like the Banner pretty sweet!
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>>Jimmy Tintle

Thanks Jimmy.....
Here in South Texas it stays warm, but recently the temps have been dropping into the 30s at night......That makes no real difference to my snakes. They are in a brumation chamber. The chamber is a partitioned off part of my snake room with a window unit a/c. It is holding around 51F right now. I will start raising the temps a few degrees a day until around Feb. 1st. Around the middle of February I will bring the males out of the 60F chamber and let them warm up to 75F and no higher........Around March 1st I plan on bringing the females out to 75F and let them settle in prior to feeding the heck of them.........
I will turn on the heat for the females but I will not for my males. And I will not allow the temps to go over 80F in the female's enclosure...........The males usually do not want to eat. So that is why I fatten them up prior to brumation........

I hope this works well...If not I am going to try a true light cycle next year along with the cool temps......
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John Lassiter

Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

For my breeding size thayeri, I stopped feeding them and turned off their supplemental heat on Halloween. The weekend after Thanksgiving I took them down into the basement corner (ranges 38-50 F). I cover their hibernaculi with a black tarp to lower the light levels, and I check their water dishes every 2-3 weeks. In mid-late February I will bring them up to a lighted area around 65 F for a couple of days, then the heat goes on. They'll start accepting small meals within a few days, then the feeding steps up. When the females first shed, I start pairing them up. I try to feed everybody as much as I can (esp. the females), but my males were NOT interested in eating at this time (tiny one-track minds). Last year I had eggs by mid April and 8 out of 11 were good and eventually hatched.

Sounds like a good plan.....
Do you think the period of darkness along with the cooling is considered their "photoperiod?"
I have often wondered how dark it is where a snake brumates in the wild. I would think it is pitch dark most of the time for them. That is why I don't think the shorter daylight hours are even noticed by a brumating snake in the wild. Thus I have never had timed lights on in the brumation chamber.....

But....Others have had great success just with minimal drops in temps and lighting cycled with daytime and nightime seasonal hours.........

Sure there are many ways but if it isn't broke don't fix it......lol
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John Lassiter

Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

My feelings exactly, John -- what works, works! I don't know if the darkness is necessary, but I think a snake hunkered down somewhere below the frost line is likely to be in very dim light, if not total darkness. Why many of my adult thayeri slow down and stop eating on their own could be photoperiod related, but the cooler end of their cages does drop in temperature considerably (from mid to high 70s down to low to mid 60s) between early September and late October). Without any controlled experiments, I can't know if it's temperature, photoperiod, or both. But you know, I can live with mystery and just marvel that the little boogers seem to know when winter is coming!

Hi John,
Best wishes for a good season for you. I am such a rookie at this, and for lack of any knowledge from all that I have read, I stopped feeding everybody about mid Nov. Then they went down about the 1st of Dec. My knobs and some of my Thayeri stopped feeding on their own in Sept, so they went down then. I plan to wake eveybody up after the 1st of March. I wake everybody up at once, but I try to keep the males cooler than the females.
Have a good winter down there.
Jeff
www.4lakessnakes.com

Thanks for sharing your plan Jeff.....
I wish EVERYONE good luck this year.....I can't wait to see all the pics and baby kings hatching....it is why I do this....Once you see them hatch you are hooked.......
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...